Food delivery bots!

[Muse]

Endangered species? Well, they are obviously not everywhere. But in my town (Berkeley, CA) I've spotted 3-4. The cute factor is off the charts! They appear as white cubes around 1.5 feet on a side, on wheels, and IIRC with an antenna sticking up. I figured them at first as robot vehicles, toys, basically, controlled by someone close by, watching them with delight. But I came to realize the last few weeks that there's probably nobody doing that, that they are somehow the robotic arm of a commercial enterprise, a company that prepares food for people, deposits it in one of these things and sends it off to a hungry customer. I saw a girl approach one and take out a bag, if I'm not mistaken. These observations were made from my car. I wasn't in a position to investigate.

My thoughts are: How do they know where to go (i.e. how do they know where they are)? How do they do this by themselves? How do they avoid accidents? How is it they have any security? What's stopping someone from stealing the lunch right out of them? Will that cute little contraption, if attacked by a villain, announce "you do not look like Sarah Connor. Desist now, or I will unleash the fury of the cyber Gods, zap you with a taser, call the police, take your picture and put it all over the Internet, become charged from antenna to wheel with so much electricity you will curse the day you were born the instant you touch me!

 

[pcslookout]

I wish I could see them in person. They look so cool. I wonder what the delivery fee is.

 

[Muse]

I wish I could see them in person. They look so cool. I wonder what the delivery fee is.

I'll see if I can take a picture of one and post in this thread. They are hell of cute.

 

[Muse]

A quick google brought me to this video, which shows them, explains them, it's evidently the guy whose brainchild this is that they interview (i.e. the CEO):

Kiwi’s robots deliver food to hungry Berkeley students

 

[Kaido]

My thoughts are: How do they know where to go (i.e. how do they know where they are)? How do they do this by themselves? How do they avoid accidents? How is it they have any security? What's stopping someone from stealing the lunch right out of them? Will that cute little contraption, if attacked by a villain, announce "you do not look like Sarah Connor. Desist now, or I will unleash the fury of the cyber Gods, zap you with a taser, call the police, take your picture and put it all over the Internet, become charged from antenna to wheel with so much electricity you will curse the day you were born the instant you touch me!

GPS with neural net programming:

https://www.starship.xyz/

Basically the same approach Tesla is using for their self-driving cars...machine learning:

https://medium.com/starshiptechnologies/how-neural-networks-power-robots-at-starship-3262cd317ec0

Amazon has a competing model:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazons-new-delivery-robot-vs-starships-college-munchie-robot/

Nuro has a small car that delivers groceries:

https://nuro.ai/

It's an interesting niche...Uber Eats, GrubHub, PostMates, DoorDash are growing quite a bit, but the delivery costs are pretty high for companies that don't already deliver (ex. Domino's pizza). Automating delivery could lower those costs. However, Tesla is also planning on entering the game...Musk announced they have plans to launch a million robo-taxis by next year:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/tesla-plans-to-launch-a-robotaxi-network-in-2020/

In that case, they'd have both cars of their own (fleet) as well as your car (rent it out, like AirBNB, while you're at work or at school or asleep, and have it self-drive people around or delivery groceries or food or whatever). Although small robots make more sense for places like college campuses. There's a lot of really interesting discussion angles in this field. My friends who work in NYC use Amazon & other same-day delivery services, which go as far as having a person enter your building & physically hand you a package. My buddy ordered a pack of cookies from Amazon and had them handed to him like two hours later, which is pretty crazy!

I like the idea of drones, but there's so many issues...the noise factor overhead, the safety risk of one falling down on you, not being able to fly in bad weather (wind, rain, snow, etc.). Robots seem a little safer, although also potentially a road hazard...just look at all the hate that public electric scooters are getting. I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually though. I mean, Amazon is pushing for next-day delivery to be standard for Amazon Prime by the end of the year, and robot-delivery seems like the next logical step to help make that happen!